a sect of Christians, the followers of Heraclon, who relied upon the Gnostic divinity, and maintained that the world was not the immediate production of the Son of God, but that he was only the occasional cause of its being created by the demiurge. The Heracleonites denied the authority of the prophecies of the Old Testament, maintaining that they were mere random fowls in the air; and that St John the Baptist was the only true voice that directed to the Messiah.